This study directly compared the academic gains of reciprocal peer tutoring, nonreciprocal peer tutoring, and a waiting-list control group. Participants included 59 elementary students from second-, third-, and fourth-grade classrooms who performed below average on curriculum-based measurement (CBM) math probes. Students involved in peer tutoring…

In the past few decades a growing research interest in internal and external factors that contribute to a student's motivation to learn has yielded numerous models and theories. Despite their similarities, these theories have tended to be developed and tested independently of each other, although some connections have been made between them. The…

This article considers the risk of failing college and how the fear of failure shapes students' behavior. Drawing on a semester-long study of students and instructors in a community college English composition course, this analysis highlights the potential for students to undermine their own educational goals in the absence of active intervention…

In recent years, significant numbers of academics from the science and health disciplines at our institution have found that their students lack the appropriate "mathematical" background to cope with first-year science subjects. Consequently, failure rates are on the increase in these subjects. The mathematical background of students…

In this study, the hierarchical model of achievement motivation [Elliot, A. J. (1997). Integrating the "classic" and "contemporary" approaches to achievement motivation: A hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation. In P. Pintrich & M. Maehr (Eds.), "Advances in motivation and achievement"…

There has been a resurgence of deficit discourses that implicate deficiencies in the language and culture of poor students as the cause of their academic failures. An influential study by Betty Hart and Todd Risley concludes that high levels of academic failure among poor children can be linked to the quantity and quality of language interactions…

The author investigated the effects of the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) instructional sequence on the computation performance of students with specific learning disabilities and students identified as at risk for failure in mathematics. Researchers have showed the CRA sequence to be effective for teaching basic mathematics facts,…

This frank and courageous book explores the persistence of failure in today's urban schools. At its heart is the argument that most education policy discussions are disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools, especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods. Charles M. Payne argues that we have failed to account fully for the…

Many hidden assumptions, attitudes, and procedures are practiced routinely in schools without much thought or analysis. One possible explanation for their occurrence is that educators become comfortable with familiar routines and believe they must be doing OK because that's the way schools have always operated. Another likely possibility involves…

Things are failing everywhere. A few years ago, several large companies disappeared almost overnight in a series of scandals. This year, the mortgage industry imploded. More recently, stalwart financial and insurance corporations have been dropping like flies. Failures happen on a smaller scale too. Recently, the all-caps word "FAIL" became a…

Reading proficiency is the goal of many local and national reading initiatives. A key component of these initiatives is accurate and reliable reading assessment. In this high-stakes testing arena, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) has emerged as a preferred measure for identification of students at risk for reading…

This study is a response to a growing disquietude in many schools in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia that there is "something wrong" with South Asian boys. During the past twenty years, approximately 100 South Asian young men have been killed as a result of criminal violence (Ministry Report, 2006), with these murder numbers…

Some accommodations that are offered to students with emotional behavior disorders (EBD) do little to remediate a diagnosed disability, resulting instead in enabling the continuance of the condition. IDEA specifies that access to educational opportunities include accommodations both in "instruction and assessment" (Byrnes, 2008, p. 307).…

The most powerful predictors of overall dropout risk among Austin Independent School District (AISD) 9th graders were failing either the state of Texas reading or math TAKS tests, having school attendance below 90%, and being 16 years or older at the start of the school year.